Forum rules
This board is for people who continue to use FossaMail, whether the last official build or later unofficial (private) builds. Exchange ideas, tips, etc. -- users helping users.No official support will be provided here, this is purely for those who continue using FossaMail for as long as it's still viable.

What would be the point of making a mozilla-like mailnews client on a mozilla-like platform and go out of my way to prevent extensibility. If I did that, what would be the advantage of it over anything else that already exists?

Linux support? Of course there would be linux support.. As it stands right now.. I think I can do linux build far easier than Windows as far as the mailnews core is concerned.

Of course, I haven't actually attempted any of it as of yet but based on info, Linux shouldn't be a problem.

I suppose I can do a little prospecting in the next few arbitrary spans of time to scope things out before someone wants to pass around the collection plate, sure.

Alright, full discloser, I would prefer to not include the jetpack/sdk capabilities if I can get away with it and obviously webextensions are out of the question. However, jetpack is not completely off the table just yet. It depends.

Oh yeah, the year thing.. Well after a year of development it should be pretty easy to maintain forever just ride off the platform and take things as they come. Shit, if all goes well I'd say viability milestone should only take a few months then after that it is cleanup and refinement then whatever else sounds good.

The money is for getting the thing going and viable and the guarantee that I will stick with it for at least a year as Lead Developer.

Alright, full discloser, I would prefer to not include the jetpack/sdk capabilities if I can get away with it and obviously webextensions are out of the question. However, jetpack is not completely off the table just yet. It depends.

What's the problem with jetpack/sdk ?and it depends from what ?

Do you plan to be the Lead Developer beyond the year ? i ask because someone has to care for the software, fixing problems that maybe will appear and adapting it to new needs.

Okay, I'll do the administrative overhead for collection. Once the amount has been collected, Tobin will receive a PayPal transfer of the amount funding development and maintenance of the MailNews client. We will hold him to his promise

So... It seems that the people who make Hyperbola OS have also ported Thunderbird/Icedove to UXP a while ago. ( https://www.hyperbola.info/news/icedove ... s-icedove/ ) As there seems to be quite some interest in a "Thunderbird on UXP", I assumed that people would want to build on that effort to bring Icedove-UXP to other Linux distributions and other OSs... But for some reason, I've never seen it brought up anywhere. Is there anything wrong with Icedove-UXP that I'm not aware of?

It won't contain or connect or use anything considered "non-free" by GNU Fascist Standards.. Though, this is not a problem with the person doing it merely the policies of an ultra-GNU supporting project in general.

This includes not being able to use any web email service that requires OAuth such as gmail. While I like the guy specifically doing icedove-uxp and I believe on a personal level he gets it.. I am not happy with his overarching project or some of the things he has done specifically to his client. I personally think he is trying to do things too quickly and taking coding risks that will leave him smack dab against a brick wall eventually.

New Tobin Paradigm wrote:It won't contain or connect or use anything considered "non-free" by GNU Fascist Standards.. Though, this is not a problem with the person doing it merely the policies of an ultra-GNU supporting project in general.

This includes not being able to use any web email service that requires OAuth such as gmail. While I like the guy specifically doing icedove-uxp and I believe on a personal level he gets it.. I am not happy with his overarching project or some of the things he has done specifically to his client. I personally think he is trying to do things too quickly and taking coding risks that will leave him smack dab against a brick wall eventually.

Was the part about not being able to connect to services like gmail referring to Icedove or a Fossamail revival? I currently use Fossamail and am happy I can have a unified inbox that I can check gmail with.

@TechnoLurker, it was about Hyperbola's IceDove thing.. I will not be excluding Oath support.. Besides, I personally am still connected to the Google Demon as well.. So that means gmail has to work

Also, even tho this thread says FossaMail what I am going to produce isn't going to be FossaMail. No calendar, no chat, and I am gonna try my best to reduce all the garbage Thunderbird put in over the past 5-10 years. Email (pop and imap), Newsgroups, and RSS are the primary features of this and it shall do those. Anything else is up in the air.

Off-topic:
Also, I want to make it absolutely crystal clear, I have no problems with the people over at Hyperbola but I do strongly dislike their policies and most of their decisions.

No. Lightning relies on xpcom components that have to be built matching the platform. The calendar is not specifically Thunderbird code. If someone wants to work out how to revive the calendar, then by all means but it won't be bundled nor will it be something I am gonna be involved with.

New Tobin Paradigm wrote:It won't contain or connect or use anything considered "non-free" by GNU Fascist Standards.. Though, this is not a problem with the person doing it merely the policies of an ultra-GNU supporting project in general.

This includes not being able to use any web email service that requires OAuth such as gmail. While I like the guy specifically doing icedove-uxp and I believe on a personal level he gets it.. I am not happy with his overarching project or some of the things he has done specifically to his client. I personally think he is trying to do things too quickly and taking coding risks that will leave him smack dab against a brick wall eventually.

I don't disagree with you wanting to have gmail as an option, but what is fascist about GNU? They just want to have no backdoors/no proprietary crap in the software/hardware because of security/privacy risks. PS, is the funding still open? I am willing to give you more if the funding is still open. I didn't think this was happening this soon. ;)

I thank you though for this. I hope you will ask for funding for a second year. :)

Last edited by zapper on Wed, 19 Sep 2018, 19:12, edited 1 time in total.

zapper wrote:I don't disagree with you wanting to have gmail as an option, but what is fascist about GNU? They just want to have no backdoors/no proprietary crap in the software/hardware because of security/privacy risks.

The GNU corner wants more than that though. The GPL for example is a very aggressive license that prevents any use of licensed software in other works without absorbing it into its "if you're here, you may as well have made it public domain from the start" zone. That is pretty much incompatible with any for-profit business model, and to be fair that is where the real hard work tends to be done.It's also the case that anything NOT licensed that way is (wrongly) accused of having backdoors just because something is proprietary or built using proprietary/non-GNU tools. It is an extremely narrow and forced world view, and that is where the parallels with fascism become rather striking.In addition, just because something is developed under the GNU philosophy doesn't magically make it free of security/privacy risks. That is "perfect world" thinking. But the world isn't perfect, and vulnerabilities can be present for years, also in FOSS, and being exploited, without the larger public being aware of it.

zapper wrote:PS, is the funding still open? I am willing to give you more if the funding is still open. I didn't think this was happening this soon.

Funding is closed since the goal was reached - Tobin has been paid for his efforts developing the application. If you still want to support it, then you can donate to the Pale Moon/UXP project -- after all, UXP is what the client will build on now and in the future.

Improving Mozilla code: You know you're on the right track with code changes when you spend the majority of your time deleting code.

"If you want to build a better world for yourself, you have to be willing to build one for everybody." -- Coyote Osborne

zapper wrote:They just want to have no backdoors/no proprietary crap in the software/hardware

That is not entirely true:

https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/criteria wrote:However, there is an exception for secondary embedded processors. The exception applies to software delivered inside auxiliary and low-level processors and FPGAs, within which software installation is not intended after the user obtains the product. This can include, for instance, microcode inside a processor, firmware built into an I/O device, or the gate pattern of an FPGA. The software in such secondary processors does not count as product software.

zapper wrote:I don't disagree with you wanting to have gmail as an option, but what is fascist about GNU? They just want to have no backdoors/no proprietary crap in the software/hardware because of security/privacy risks.

The GNU corner wants more than that though. The GPL for example is a very aggressive license that prevents any use of licensed software in other works without absorbing it into its "if you're here, you may as well have made it public domain from the start" zone. That is pretty much incompatible with any for-profit business model, and to be fair that is where the real hard work tends to be done.

I have to say Google has been quite successful building a for profit business on the GPL Linux kernel (Android and Chrome OS). It's mostly that they can't ship closed source drivers in the kernel so some things run in userspace instead which is less efficient. What really got Google in trouble was using Oracle owned Java and as far as I know that legal struggle is still ongoing. Oracle wants at least 8.8 billion dollar from Google.

Google wants to get away from both Linux/GPL and Java/Oracle with Fuchsia. I don't see anything wrong with GPL, it's there to enforce "contribute back mentality".

zapper wrote:I don't disagree with you wanting to have gmail as an option, but what is fascist about GNU? They just want to have no backdoors/no proprietary crap in the software/hardware because of security/privacy risks.

The GNU corner wants more than that though. The GPL for example is a very aggressive license that prevents any use of licensed software in other works without absorbing it into its "if you're here, you may as well have made it public domain from the start" zone. That is pretty much incompatible with any for-profit business model, and to be fair that is where the real hard work tends to be done.It's also the case that anything NOT licensed that way is (wrongly) accused of having backdoors just because something is proprietary or built using proprietary/non-GNU tools. It is an extremely narrow and forced world view, and that is where the parallels with fascism become rather striking.In addition, just because something is developed under the GNU philosophy doesn't magically make it free of security/privacy risks. That is "perfect world" thinking. But the world isn't perfect, and vulnerabilities can be present for years, also in FOSS, and being exploited, without the larger public being aware of it.

zapper wrote:PS, is the funding still open? I am willing to give you more if the funding is still open. I didn't think this was happening this soon.

Funding is closed since the goal was reached - Tobin has been paid for his efforts developing the application. If you still want to support it, then you can donate to the Pale Moon/UXP project -- after all, UXP is what the client will build on now and in the future.

Okay, but proprietary software cannot be verified that I think is one of his problems with it. Although I do agree there is no silver bullet with regard to free software licenses. Not even AGPL3 is perfect for that purpose. :/

So yeah, I do agree the GNU philosphy isn't perfect, but it does make it easier to detect backdoors/issues.

Besides, isn't Fascism more of a government owns everything type way of ruling a country?

On an unrelated note though, if it will please either of you, I will donate to your UXP project. I quite appreciate the idea of UXP.

Last edited by zapper on Thu, 20 Sep 2018, 02:41, edited 1 time in total.